


Midline

by bexacaust



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Gladiator Life, How2Basic: Warlord Edition, Miner Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 12:02:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17043380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bexacaust/pseuds/bexacaust
Summary: To swing on the spiral of our {divinity} and still be a || human? ||





	1. Plot Map

_Black then white are all I see_  
_In my infancy._  
_Red and yellow then came to be,_  
_Reaching out to me,_  
_Lets me see._

 

Color, after all this time, is strange.

It begins for him in monochromes; the shades of stone and dust all his kind learns and knows and lives. The heavy grey of emptiness, the fuzzy statics of darkened tunnels lit by increments of spotlight glare. The whites and shadows of veins and ores in a kaleidoscope of funeral tones that fill his vision for so long. The colors translate into sounds, the thrum and crash of machinery cutting into the soul and skin of his planet to expose it's lifeblood for harvest.

Mosquitoes in the tunnels, slowly bleeding their home dry as they move place to place out of sight and mind by those walking the streets above them. He rides a spiral of calculated risk and reward with every heavy-armored step into the depths he's come to call home and hovel. The caverns they dwell in like secrets hidden in the corner's of a rich mech's closet; surrounded by so many skeletons of those who came before.

And the, there are new shades- Reds and yellows and oranges; the blues and greens and violets of superheated mineral deposits like hellfire breathing. And with this break in consistency, he finds a new craving.

Words.

He desires nothing more than ways to describe what he sees; from the flash of a warning siren-light to the glow of energon veins pulsing in depths too dark to be pierced by his spotlight. The taste of grit and dust rolling over his tongue, catching inside his cheekplating and covering his glossa in the sour tang of hopeless labor. Dirty gold, clean copper, the wet smoothness of mercury in dripping pockets grazed by drill twice his size. The many shades of living steel- and dead metal found in half crushed heaps under caved in roofs.

The crack of supports too old to continue their duties, the clash and clatter of his designated function flashing like swordblades at noon. The duel of mech versus nature and all the semantics that entails.

Death, life, and death again; a song and dance so common it's the closest thing he has to home.

That, and a three glyph code- his location, D-16.

He sought more words, stealing datapads set aside and carelessly forgotten and devoured them with eager optics as he sat cross-legged by a berth shared with another: Terminus. A name fit for a an ending, a name that felt haunted as though being worn by a living being was against some universe's law.

He took shelter in it's comforting ominousness.

He gained words, he gained language and nuance and an understanding of the beast known as The Status Quo. he saw the hatred held in a handshake, the rebellion woven in closeness shadowed by the dark. He felt fire in kisses stolen in mineshafts and he smelled change mixed in with the dust of strange aeons lost to memory; he built salvation in shaky linguistic foundations soon shored up by life lessons and lamplight novella.

From obscurity to shift lead; From shift lead to line head he built his name and his language from rough hewn stone brick and glowing ore

And then, one evening as grit drifted from him like a comet tail; he began to write.


	2. Foreword

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As below, so above and beyond,  
> I imagine drawn outside the lines of reason.  
> Push the envelope. Watch it bend.

_There is so much more_   
_And beckons me_   
_To look through to these_   
_Infinite possibilities._

 

Words are no longer so foreign and untouchable; semantics becoming the windows through which he views the world he has dwelt in like so many skittering creatures that shy away from the light he carries.

Through his understanding, through his self-guided lessons and the distant but gentle words whispered by his shoulder; he learns truths that set his fuel lines aflame. He speaks like potassium chloride tumbling into gutterwater; his punctuation built by explosions and chipped steel littering the floor like so much shrapnel. Violence is distateful, and the words that bring it about are scorned with a huff and a frown that digs lines like quarries into a once youthfully smooth face. 

He discovers his temper as he discovers a hunger not based on his low fuel intake- no regret to be found as he inches towards starvation if it keeps Terminus alive for that much longer.

His words comfort him. They fill his processor with dreams of change, dreams of the sky he'd been denied since his creation on an assembly line made of so much filth and factory-grade dishevelment. A soul deep stain on his record and name when uttered by those who claimed him as property. He hears talk of freedom, of rights- of equality. It enchants him, it fills the empty space in his tank left by reduced meals and long hours like high grade.

He finds another to share his words with, Impactor. Big and burly and made of near-poetic vulgarity even as he denies the nuance of his lewd sentences. They share drinks together, an act held sacred in their caste it seemed, and speak of things being different. Of their opposing views on how change must come about; Impactor with his talk of flying fists and fury-filled war cries and Megatron's demand for conversation and negotiation. There are some arguments where compromise is nonexistent- but they find a kind of love in these conflicts of syllables as swordblades.

And then the violence he scorned came for his helm; tables and glasses crashing into shards like colliding asteroids and he hid like it was a cave-in. Hugging his knees and howling for Impactor to stop, to back down, to leave-

But it was in vain.

And so the poet discovered the power of the words he had grown so fond of; he discovered the movement he had caused, and wore the title of Rabble-Rouser before he truly knew what it meant. He watched as he was demeaned in the eyes of those seated on hot gold thrones in glass houses, watched as he was treated like expendable material or process waste and watched his world begin to crumble as the ceiling he'd come to know began to collapse all around him.

And he raged with all pretense of grace gone from him; he stared at shattered glass and found the patterns as sure as a cartographer saw the trail through mountains untamed and felt an idea begin to form somewhere between spark and processor. He Began, there in front of a shattered screen.

And there, he nearly ended. He will forever remember the cold mediberth beneath his back, the laughter of mnemosurgeons echoing behind his plating like a deep-tissue infection as the hum of medical tools ring his audials like a death knell. The sensation of trying to escape the heavy armorplating his body was encased in like a living, breathing coffin; the lights growing bright and brighter as he felt the end looming up behind him like the name of the one he knew deep down he was destined to lose.

He closes his optics.

He opens his optics.

He opens his optics, it seems, to the flash of red and orange amongst black and white and feels the fear of a siren's howl echoing down tunnels and shafts. Heavy pedes carry him with the swiftness of muddy waters in a field flood down, down into the darkness he lived in against his will to find... nothing. Nothing more than an empty berth and unused fuel ration. And he screams the name of the end of innocence like a dying animal to receive nothing but the answering wail of sirens.

He gathers datapads in hand and his optics leak, the empty berth and cold fuel ration haunting his mind's eye like a vengeful ghost of failures inescapable.

He gathered his words, and he ran.


	3. Final Draft

_Over-thinking, over-analyzing separates the body from the mind._   
_Withering my intuition, missing opportunities and I must_   
_Feed my will to feel my moment drawing way outside the lines._

 

His words no longer gave him comfort; they no longer lulled him, instead they twisted the shards of loss in his spark like thumbscrews on the soul of one forced into helplessness.

And a mech who bore the marks of life lived behind rose-tinted glass stood up to dirty the language Megatron had found so much comfort in; treating the mechs he now sees as his people like something so... replaceable. Something not quite fury, but not entirely betrayal rose and filled out the gaps in old armor and Megatron stood with fire in his optics and volcanic steam powering the pistons of his frame and he hurled the closest thing he had to a stone at the effigy of prosperity that spoke with a poisonous mercy tongue to the gathered crowd.

An arm torn away like the beginning of sacrificial dismemberment to awakening gods and the rousing cry of the crowd signaled Megatron's most hated enemy: Violence. But, in a fit of philosopher's madness it felt- he welcomed it. His strength a keen awareness in his peripheral as the first of what would become many threw themselves into his hell-powered hands. 

His miasmic clarity brought about by riot and chaos pushed him, the wet crash of helm meeting planet loud unto deafening in his hearing and drowning out the world until the pieces slipped from death-coated hands and the haze vanished from his optics. He sat in dumbfounded terror of his own psyche, staring at the energon staining his plating and gumming the minute joints of servos as he shook from his receding strength.

It coiled like a serpent in the back of his sparkchamber, tongue flicking to taste the air and waiting to answer the call of bloodletting when the time came.

Hands upon hands upon him, gathering him back into himself and anchoring him with manacles and the burn of electrified pacifism, magnetizing his tongue to his dentae and rendering him silent. Cloying and thick as the energon still on his hands it seemed to choke him like toxic air in the mines he was dragged away from like dead-weight. He walked the gallows trail, optics still wide and terrified as he stared down as his tightly coiled servos; arms crossed in front of him like a prayer to a social structure turned religion. The ship he boarded felt empty even as it filled and the voices faded and faded some more until his glossa came unstuck and he finally felt he could breathe.

He heard the whispers of riot once more, helpless to watch the tide of dissent as it built around him again. He watched the roiling masses begin to churn and something settled within his tanks. 

There was no more dodging, his words could not truly shield him from a world built on the backs of the broken and the tired. He either rode the spiral, or was lost to the spill.

When the pair of mechs broke free, Rumble and Frenzy and aptly named from it, the world tore in half. Megatron stood and forced his shackles to release him and the fire burning within him from the first moment he saw a novel's cold glow and he learned once more to fight. faces fell before him like so many scarecrows in forgotten fallow lands and his struts creaked and ached with whatever tried to claw it's way into his fuel lines until he stood at a helm and stared at the stars.

"To Kaon."

The moan of engines torn from their course, and he began to feel free for the first time.


	4. Manifesto

_I embrace my desire to_   
_I embrace my desire to feel the rhythm, to feel connected_   
_Enough to step aside and weep like a widow_   
_To feel inspired, to fathom the power,_   
_To witness the beauty, to bathe in the fountain,_   
_To swing on the spiral_

 

He did not know how long it had been since the running stopped. All he knew was darkness had become a comfort, even punctuated by the pleas for mercy that would never be honored.

The mech who had, for lack of a better term, taken them in was Clench.

his voice was saturated in blood and oil, words irridescent like stains on pavement as he spoke of riches and grandeur beyond knowing; glory beyond God himself. Megatron stood firm, watching as his fellow miners fell victim to cloying praise and sly coaxing- lured out onto a bloodsplattered stage to the jeers and catcalls of thousands. The light were blinding and the smell sickly sweet as Megatron desperately tries to hold his ground...

But the promises sounds so... alluring. Gilded words caress his broken ego and shattered spark like unknown lover's servos and pluck every strand of insecurity like the harps in Vosian choirs. Surely, just once...

 

No, his logic told him with a full stop. He couldn't, he WOULD NOT flirt with what he had opposed so long. Violence begets violence, he wouldn't be broken by the very cycle he fought against.

_'But you are different...'_ , whispered the serpent hiding in his spark's corona, _'You are gifted with understanding, you are different in so many ways. You have already turned adversity into victory, you have set the wheels of the machine into motion...'_

He stared at the ring, his steps silent to his audials.

_'If there is anyone who can reign the Self in, it is the poet.'_ , crooned that voice to him as he stepped into the light.

_'For words describe action, and actions births legend. And what is_ _a legend but a poem with no rhyme?'_

The cheers were loud, his armor was heavy and the optics in the crowd were bright as that burn began to heat his lines once again, one final time. His hands curled into fists and his optics showed him not a gladiator, but the bastard Senator who drove him to sign a death warrant for a mech he never knew the name of.

"Become poetry.", he murmured to himself, out loud or not he couldn't tell.

**And he did.**


	5. Doctrine

_Feed my will to feel this moment urging me to cross the line._   
_Reaching out to embrace the random._   
_Reaching out to embrace whatever may come._

 

Betrayer. Liar. False God. Deceiver.

Words that littered Megatron's glossa like the careless scraps of a rich mech's wealth. His lines pounded his pulse like a dead mech's march to his execution jut and he bared fanged dentae as his optics were alight. The ice around his spark began to tendril out and hiss as it met the magma of his anger- a slow moving, slow building unstoppable force he had cultivated match after match after match.

Clench looked at him in something like awe, something like mockery. Maybe that was just how fear looked on a being so used to having his whims catered to that it became an expectation.

Megatron's armor was scarred and scuffed and battered as his soul had become as his snarl became a berserker's grin. There was no mercy within Kaon; and her sons delivered death with the glee of wild fae. And who was he to deny his Madonna, the city who rebirthed him into Megatron of Kaon?

The blood of greedy wishful thinking stained his armor like warpaint when all was said and done, when his betrayer and carnal linguist lay dead at his pedes like a fool to altar and Megatron looked upon the gladiatorial arena like a conquered kingdom. His domain was caked in gore and guts and laced over with snide cyanide as he stepped forth a victor once again. Cheers and jeers and fearful silence, all in equal measure as he looked over the witnesses gathered for his first sermon to the forgotten masses that mingled with polished royalty.

And for the first time in far, far too long... Megatron laughed. It bellowed out like a rolling thunderclap and roared into every dim corner as fangs flashed and energon glittered like liquid gold filigree.

Megatron had Become- but what he had evolved into was something fearful, something strange to him still despite the rush of victory and the security of knowing you are the most dangerous thing in a room.

It was a Senator who clicked his dentae in lieu of applause as he watched with moneyhunger in his optics like a lamplight, lurid to the desperate moths around him with so little to their name.

Soundwave, a silent sentinel, took the role of messenger. He came bearing gifts and offerings- sacrifices to a godmech in the making. He stared levelly through his visor into Megatron's now-wild optics as the mech tilted his helm and spoke with the culture of one who has learned the hard way the power of what he will and will not say. Every word was bluntly crooned and lovingly formed by the gladiator's mouth- even, to Soundwave's surprise, to his cassettes. He leaned closer, a wordless inquiry, and felt a shiver along his protoform when Megatron acquiesced to a soundless request.

Soundwave did not demand, but he did not truly accept either. So to have a mech so willingly open his mind to him gave him a rush of excitement he preferred not to explore.

He dove in to Megatron's existence, watching the crescendo of cruelty that dragged a once skittish miner into the glory of the arena and stared in awe at the stubborn insistence Megatron retained. His demand and wholesparked desire for change, and his ruthless willingness to attain change no matter who stood in his way. The words 'You are being decieved' drilled holes into Soundwave's spark and poured the molten platinum of Megatron's solemn promise into them like fortification; it felt like a blessing and weighed like a consequence as yet unknown.

But, just this once. Just this one time... Soundwave decided to go all in on a bet he hadn't even considered.

Megatron smiled, a sphinx with a new riddle, and welcomed him with lidded optics and relaxed servos.


	6. Crescendo

_With my feet upon the ground_   
_I lose myself between the sounds_   
_And open wide to suck it in._   
_I feel it move across my skin._

 

Of all the weapons he had amassed... words remained his eternal favorite.

He thrived on flaying himself before the gathered masses, the malcontents, the weary and the tired. He laid himself bare and roared his words made addictive through fierce promise and fanatic ambition. He held tight to the tail end of the whirling storm and centered the eye on him, ever on him- on his grin built on violence and verbosity, on steeled plating and heavy armor. Always he flashed his fangs in defiance or welcome, one could never know for sure.

And always, always, his word echoed far beyond him like the oncoming hurricane of no mercy, nor quarter. And when he raised a curled fist, a wave spread of the mimicked gesture like the ripples of an oncoming horde.

Violence begets violence, he told himself once with fear making the words sour to him. Violence begets violence, he was warned once in hushed tones by lamplight.

"VIOLENCE BEGETS VIOLENCE!", he roared now to a howling crowd, "SO THEY HAVE DONE TO US, WE SHALL RETURN TEN, NO, TWENTYFOLD!"

"No more shall we be cast aside for not suiting the whims of those who do not care for who we are.", he said to three faces, and watches in vicious joy as wings perked slowly in answer, "We will be equals, or we will be the New World Order- no compromise without Justice."

"WE SHALL BE LED ASTRAY NO LONGER!", he bellowed to new faces, feeling an empty stare lock onto him, "AND WE SHALL DEMAND JUSTICE AS WE BREAK DOWN THE GATES!" And he looked down to see slanted finials and hungry optics and offered a hand.

"You are no longer Drift.", he would announce within moments of introduction, "You shall be known as Deadlock... And you shall become one of my greatest Generals. And no more will the gutters be a stain on your name; but they will be your beginning."

And the matching fanged smile warmed his spark like an arena victory as he stared to the hopeful hellsent crowds.

"No more will we be at the mercy of gold-dusted fools.", he told a mech of science, warped by a punishment he didn't truly deserve, "You shall have all you need- no, all you deserve."

And he stood too tall to be ignored now, his chest bearing a shattered glass symbol of controlled desolation. A symbol born of dust and grime, of dirt and pain and loss and all things swept under the rugs of rich diplomats and government lackies lacking heart and dedication. A cause was born, and born again all at once; spiralling out in a broken sequence of jumps and bursts and fueled by the poetic ambition of a single desperate need for words.

And Megatron opened his servos to grasp the tail of his oncoming storm, no longer afraid of the buffeting winds or the pull of receding tides and lay in wait to ride the tsunami he had stirred up when his footsteps shook the ground beneath Iacon's lofty towers.

_I'm reaching up and reaching out._  
_I'm reaching for the random or whatever will bewilder me._  
_Whatever will bewilder me._


	7. Worth A Thousand Words

_And following our will and wind_   
_We may just go where no one's been._   
_We'll ride the spiral to the end_   
_And may just go where no one's been._

He would not be ignored. Not again, never again. This time, the energon spilled would stain not only plating... but history itself.

Loyalties had swayed and sparks had been gained and lost in equal measures- and Megatron still watched and waited. Announced everafter by a symphony of destruction, his optics surveyed what he had conquered and he turned to Soundwave, and Starscream. No words were needed, and Soundwave nodded in agreement. He and Starscream took to table, and began to plan.

Those guilty would be punished; it would be public, and it would not be pretty.

Megatron's voice echoed in nightmares and daydreams alike, those for and against crashing together like colliding ocean currents in constant battle for the upper hand. Claws and fangs on either side were bared as Megatron parted cities like seas before his battlewon might and mastery. Unadorned and yet crowned a kind of king he sat upon a throne of promises and cold ruthless ambition; watching his followers free their sparks in his name and his name alone-

He was a Decepticon.

He was a warrior.

He was The Cause, and the Way, and the Right.

He had gone from poet to pawn; from pawn to king, and from king to player.

Now was the time for checkmate- now was the time for a final evolution, a last ascension and a farewell to the hopefull pacifism he once prayed could carry his people into a new kind of peace.

Now, he would go from King... To Warlord. And from here, there was no going back.

Soundwave and Starscream presented their plan, presented their new wary cry in the form of death and carnage and Megatron felt something slip out with his exvents before his words followed the steam.

"Then let us show them the might of the Decepticons."

And once again, he wore shackles on his wrists- how flimsy they felt to his new strength, how different the scenario from all those years ago on a prisoner ship destined for death. Now was no time for his precious words, filed away in a lockbox buried in his spark where maybe, somewhere, a poet still scrawled his dreams by lamplight in fading night.

Now was time for the only actions with meaning. Now was the time earn that quota of linguistic equivalence and he closed his optics as it began. And first Soundwave disappeared like a shadow in falling dusk- and then Starscream, a wordsmith in his own right, too disappeared from his peripheral vision. And once again... Megatron smiled.

Like death come for the unknowing, he smiled as the last shreds of poet-covered scraps fell away from him and he felt a new crown settling upon his helm.

One forged in blood and fire, in destruction and absolution of equal degrees. and when his shackles fell away like a cocoon carapace he stood tall and proud amongst the dead and dying and set his eyes on the beginning of the True End.

"To Nova Peak.", he said in a quiet rumble, "It is time for the Decepticons to Rise."

_Spiral out. Keep going._

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired my my 26 year addiction to Lateralus by Tool.


End file.
